“When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.”

  ––J.F.K., before being shot

  Hi, I’m Ed. Nice to finally talk. We might’ve known each other from another life. This is the new me.

  Most guys in here don’t forget my name. But, a long time ago, before I was in here, the gals on the outside never even knew my name. They never even looked at me. I guess I’m ugly. Chin too small. Little lips. Misshapen brow. Got a doc to look at the darned thing. He said I got some sorta growth shit. I don’t know. And the glasses. Forget it. Who wants a poindexter? But I ain’t smart. Not book smart, anyway. Not ‘til now.

  On top of that. I’m far, far too tall. Last time they measured me, I was almost seven foot. And maybe I’ve grown some more in here. I heard parlour palms grow in the dark. I heard rat’s teeth grow infinitely, until they grow into the rat’s own brain.

  The darkness has got me thinking. All I can see is this dictaphone’s red dot, glowing. It reminds me of a campfire on Loma Prieta. But, maybe, just maybe, it’s also an eye. Looking at me for my crimes, my sin, my taint.

  Well, here it goes. I never spoke good. I think that’s why girls never liked me. Biggest boy in school and girls just regarded me as an oddity. A weird giant among the nymphs. I never read good neither. Never went to college. Never had the high school prom. Never had a hookup in the car. Never got to run my fingers down her neck, down her jeans, down her cleft.

  It made me mad. I guess you can tell. Oh, boy, my hands are shaking. I’m mad, alright. That’s why I’m leaving this voice message. Long story, I guess I’ll get into it later. I never got to be with girls, not as I should anyway. Coz I was holed up in the bughouse over state lines. After I got out, all I did was pump gas, jerk off at home, and shoot the shit with other angry young men. Y’know, blue collar types.

  My mother works at UCSC. Or, should I say, she did. Not a professor. God forbid they dress up women in tweed and call them professors. But the world has changed a lot since the sunny seventies. Drugs and earthquakes and bloodshed and all. Free Love weren’t a thing for me. On account of being in the asylum. Love wasn’t either.

  Mom never loved me. Always called me names. Said I was just like my pop. I never knew him. He was in the army. Not green, neither. I don’t know what outfit, but he was there in the thick of it. Starting in ‘43, up ‘til the end of it. We all know how that war ended. Fireworks. That’s what my father did, I hear. Atomic testing. I wonder if he lit up all those little paper houses himself. Ha-ha.

  Where was I? Oh, yeah. I blame my bitch of a mother for the way things are. I could never talk to any of those sweet, sun-kissed California gals. Mom never showed me how to. All she knew was complain and drink, usually at the same time. Add that with her profession at the university. Nothing worse than a woman at a university. Real stuck up. Real condescending.

  But she wasn’t smart or nothing. Admin. Annoying bureaucrat type. You already know the ones. Something out of Kafka. Now, I ain’t usually the reading type. It’s just they gave us plenty to read here in the hole. I read them aloud. Of course, all books, all stories, all poems, must be read aloud. I read them for the blind. But I know they already see me for what I am.

  I don’t know why I killed mom. I think it was the last thing I had to do. After what I did. I even used her car. I even used her head. Oh, God. I guess it’s for the best I’m in here. If you’re listening, I’m sorry. I gotta. I gotta. I’ll try again next time.

  #

  Here we go again. I got sidetracked by someone in the next cell. He’s in here for something real bad. So am I. I guess. But I’m trying to better myself, aren’t I? I read to others. Try to build them up. Try to fill them with stories and pretty ideas, nice images. That sort of thing. I like reading to the blind. I found out the guy who wrote the Odyssey, uh, Homer, he was blind too. I’d wanna read to Homer if I could. But, y’know, he’s dead and all.

  They got me to read about Jason and the Golden Fleece. I didn’t know Jason’s journey was a retelling of all sorts of stories. That’s because of the poet who wrote it. I forget his name, but Jason is another type of Perseus, another type of Odysseus. One cut off Medusa’s head. The other slept in Calypso’s and Circe’s bed. Whoever this poet guy was, he worked at the Library of Alexandria. He taught Pharaohs.

  That’s what I would do in a past life, if I could start it all again. Remake stories and teach Pharaohs. Ha-ha. I guess that’s what I do now. But there’s no fire, no flame, here in the dark. My library is all on this dictaphone. So, I better be careful what I say, I guess. And you can be the Pharaoh for me. With my words, I can resurrect these memories from the crypt.

  I dunno if a dung beetle or a mummy is gonna come out. I hope it’s both.

  #

  The one story they got me to read recently was by Sophocles. Oedipus Rex. I really thought to myself. Wait a minute. This is the best thing since sliced bread. Why didn’t I know about this before? It felt like apple pie on my tongue. Sweet for my heart and brain.

  I think the guards, and the prison warden, said it was my best performance yet. They told me to get in character as much as I could. It was easy to do. ‘Til the guy next door started speaking in tongues and crying and screaming about nonsense. Something about Christ. Something about stigmata. Jeez Louise. The hole is just that. A hole. I wonder if I’ll ever see the daylight again.

  I know. I know I don’t deserve it. But that scene when Oedipus starts recalling the Sphinx. How she’s a singing bitch. How people weren’t never free because of her riddles. And how a prophet needed to go and solve her riddles. Well, I guess that made me want to see the sun. I wanted to say that all out loud. That monologue. And feel the dawn touch my skin. So that I know it’s all true. That I’m a prophet.

  I had to cut out her tongue. Coz a Sphinx always lies. Just like a Medusa turns a man’s heart to stone. Stone. That’s what I am now. That’s what I was then. Hard as stone.

  #

  She always petrified me. Even when I was a kid. She’d throw me in the basement. Hit me. Call me a little faggot. Say I was just like my pop. But she never let me have him. Worthless, weird, ugly. There weren’t an insult she didn’t use on me.

  Once, when she threw me in the dark basement, I just screamed my head off. I’ve never screamed like that since. I punched walls. I threw myself into the blackness. I pulled and tugged my hair. I screamed and screamed, ‘til my throat was almost bleeding. Taste of iron. So raspy I couldn’t speak no more. But I tried to scream. Soundlessly. ‘Til my eyes felt like they’d fall out.

  That made her ticked the hell off. She came down to the basement, yelling and carrying on. The light poured into the dark well. Into that city of Dis. That’s the first time I hit her. I threw her across the basement. I didn’t kill her, but it looked like I did. I went up the steps. My little sister was there, bawling her little eyes out.

  I just walked past her, went into her room, and pulled her dollies’ heads off. And threw her dollhouse around the room. Threw ‘em ‘til all the parts went flying and breaking everywhere. I don’t remember much after that. ‘Cept when mom came back up, bloody tangled hair and all. She said, “Ed, you’re going to have to stay with your pop.”

  My pop? Aw man. Maybe I gotta do this more, I thought to myself. Coz I’ll get just what I want.

  #

  Ed. There is no chicken and egg. Only sperm and men. The cycle of Ed begetting more Eds, until the whole world is filled with Eds. Ha-ha. Like father, like son. My pop weren’t Laius, or nothing. Still my father, I guess.

  But he was blind to me. He never seemed to look at me. Not like I was his son, anyway. Sometimes, I wonder if he was really my dad. He was big, sure. And he was smart. Likeable, really. But he had that sort of meekness only a veteran has, or a prisoner of war.

  Some call it survivor’s guilt. I call it being a capital V-I-C-T-I-M. Only women, or sons of women, become victims. Pop didn’t live much. At least, I never saw him live. He just, y’know, occupied the space he was in. Vacantly so. In a way, I thought all that shit he saw in Germany, and on those blast sites, just made him real blind. Maybe an atomic explosion or radiation did that. He could never see the world for what it was. Because he was a prophet. Not like Oedipus. But like Tiresias.

  I wonder if I could have saved him. I was too young to, yeah, I know that. And my mother already cast her hexes, her curses on him. Told him so many riddles he went back into being a baby, even in old age. But, if I read to him, would’ve he seen the world differently?

  Pop didn’t even see through me when he looked at me. It was a blank stare. Thousand-yard stare shit. Still, he could see women. He only looked at his wife when I was around. Nothing like my fat old mother. She was young. A hot piece of ass. And she knew it. She’d even rub her hands across my back. And press her tits against my shoulder. And leave kisses on the hollow of my cheek. Pop was blind to the world without women in it. But, lo and behold, he saw his wife embrace me. That’s the only time I saw him real ticked off.

  So, instead of fighting me, he shipped me off. To his parents. Real old desert folk. The type that looked as suntanned as a fucking toad. Bumps and grooves and attitude and all. Lived way away. Dust bowl town. Somewhere haunted, y’know. Probably where they sent prospectors and cowboys to die in the heat.

  When I arrived at the ranch, with nothing but my shoes and Levi’s and flannel shirt, my grandma was already bitching. Screaming about groceries, or the lack of rainfall. I dunno. Grandpa was there, too. But he was silently wiping an old hunting rifle. Looked like an aught-three. Shit. Where’d gramps get that?

  #

  Blood covered the tiles, the cupboards, the dining table, the chairs, the windows. I couldn’t see much outside, but grandpa’s car rolled into the dusty driveway. I didn’t wanna have to do it. But he couldn’t see his wife of how many decades there on the ground. Her head was blown right off. Jeez Louise. Aught-three packs a punch, doesn’t it?

  Gramps came up the side of the house. His hunched shadow through the window. An easy shot. I just needed to exhale, is all. Pull the trigger. Squeeze, squeeze. The eye, squinting, sees nothing. Well, nothing but the silhouette. Then the shadow falls down. The candle of life flickers off. Only death emerges where light is absent. Found that out the hard way.

  #

  I’m not crazy. This all happened. I swear. I got a few screws loose, but I ain’t crazy. There really were a bunch of mouth-breathing invalids in the hospital. And a bunch of yahoos to match ‘em running the asylum. In their infinite wisdom, they give me an IQ test. First time I found out I was real bright. Mom always called me insults. Dumb was her favourite. Idiot was her second.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  But the IQ test said I was real smart. I doubt the others passed it. Coz they even got me to administer the tests. I knew them inside and out. Hand out the sheets of paper, measure the time, see what shitty answers the fools in there gave. Laugh to myself. Enjoy this line of work. Rotating shapes and patterns. That’s all I can do.

  First time I did the test, I scored high. The second time, after I figured out psychometrics, or whatever they call it, I got even higher. Go figure. Someone with that sorta IQ ain’t crazy. You kidding? Einstein could commit no crime. He slept around, y’know. No one cares. Oppenheimer was a genius too. My dad woulda known. Both of them were saints.

  The shrinks, in their infinite reason, let me out. And, by the time I was back on the streets, I was back in my mother’s arms. But the world was different. I found the world of rock ‘n’ roll, bubblegum, co-education, and sex. All of which I’d never have, and never would have. When I was back at mom’s house, she only hissed: “You make it impossible for me to get laid, Ed. You’re a fucking embarrassment, Ed.”

  #

  First job I had was pumping gas. Last job I had, funnily enough, was pumping gas. Reading to the blind ain’t exactly a job. It’s nice. But I ain’t paying rent with it. Jail’s paid by others. But, even when I pumped gas, I barely paid rent. Living at home, of course, is cheap as hell. Money wise, anyway. Spiritually and personally, though? I found it, and find it still, very, very draining.

  Mom drank every night. A nightcap to her was a whole bottle of sherry. Sometimes, she’d have whisky or vodka. But she’d fall asleep and let it spill all over. Drench herself, drench her bed, drench her clothing. God, it stank. I’d just look at her in the doorway. And wish she had no mouth to drink.

  I had to get outta the house. So, I joined a few men’s clubs. Talked to guys. It was just like being in the asylum, I guess. The topic was always sex and tits and ass. The stuff we’d never had. Guys who pump gas and join men’s clubs aren’t the ones with books and nice cars and comfy jobs and slick fucking hairdos.

  I remember pumping gas someday. And a beautiful blondie with strawberry lips and eyes like oceans got out. She asked for me to fill her up. I nodded. Put in the nozzle. Let the gas flow into her tank. She was a co-ed, I could tell. The way she carried herself with more confidence and grace than any woman ever should.

  “You from round here?” she asked.

  A bright pink bubble blew up in my face. She drew the skin of the bubblegum back into her mouth. Sucked it. Chewed it. Masticating, masticating, like a praying mantis.

  I said nothing. Just let the pump run. A little too long.

  “Stop that. I ain’t made of money. I just need to get to UCSC and back across the highway.”

  I nodded. Pulled out the nozzle.

  “See you at the dance?”

  She got in the car. Drove off.

  Dance? What dance? My hands were trembling. Some of the gas pump guys came out. Slapped my back. Told me they could see my boner in my overalls all the way across the yard.

  “Did you get her number?” one asked.

  “What’s her name?” the other asked.

  “Fuck,” I said. “I don’t know. Did that happen?”

  “Ed, you gotta get to UCSC, man,” some other said. “That’s where all the hot co-eds are.”

  “UCSC?” I said. “My mother works there.”

  I was in a dream. But I woke up in another dream. The summer was just beginning. Sex. Beaches. Music. Co-eds.

  #

  I drove in mom’s car. Like I always did. The number plate was switched. But the university sticker was there. Cops were pulling people over. They waved me down. I hit the brakes. Wound down the window.

  “Where you headed?”

  Told ‘em I worked at UCSC.

  “Alright. But you’d better keep an eye out,” the cop said. “There’s a killer on the loose. Only co-eds. I’m sure you’ve heard the news.”

  “Oh my God,” I cried. “A killer? Here?”

  “Just keep your eyes out,” the cop said again. “And report anything amiss.”

  “Of course, officer. Jeez Louise, a killer in Santa Cruz.”

  The window rolled up. I drove on. But there was no change of costume. No change of mask. When I got closer to the campus, I saw some co-eds wave me down. They were freshmen, by the looks of it. One Chinese. The other a pretty white girl with beautiful blue eyes. I pulled over, as fast as I could. Something slid in the glove compartment. My heart skipped a beat, as the blue-eyed girl leaned near the window. I rolled it down.

  “You going to UCSC?”

  “Sure thing. I study there. Hop on in.”

  Doors open and close. But I think I’ve trapped them forever. They cannot see anything anymore. I have shrouded them. A veil of Calypso.

  #

  The Asian’s in the passenger seat, I think. She must have been. Because I had to keep looking back at the blue-eyed girl. She’s mesmerising. Like Circe’s spell. And I didn’t mind being a pig.

  After a while, the two start asking questions. They need to get to Lit 101. They’re late for class. They’ve got an assignment on Homer’s Odyssey and feminist readings. Psh. You’re missing nothing, girlies.

  The road careens over a valley. Grass grows wildly. Gums and osiers droop, their branches like nooses. Oh, well, here’s good enough. I pull over at a bend of the road. We are nowhere near the campus. That was a few turnoffs away and some latitudes away. The glove compartment rattles. But this time, I pull it out. The revolver flashes. I don’t hit anyone, but the fear is palpable. Glass shatters in the breathless climate.

  “Okay, Bambis, one and two. Lets get out of the car, slowly.”

  “Don’t kill me,” the Asian cries.

  Tears fall down her face, like wax melting on a Saint Mary painting.

  The blue-eyed girl says something. Somethings turn into screams. Frantic. Frantic. But the door’s locked. Sorry, girly. I hold down the Asian with my spare, left hand. It isn’t hard. She weighs less than a quarter of what I do. Then I put the barrel up to the other whore’s head. Her blue eyes drain of colour. Tears billow, flow, run off. Rills of fear. The last colour of her irises slough out, turning her wholly monochrome.

  #

  “Ed,” my sister says. “Why’re you out so late?”

  “I dunno. Why’re you here?”

  I walk into the house. The living room blares with white ghosts. My sister sits in front of the TV. The old idiot box. I don’t know if we got many in prison. I don’t have one in the hole. I carry the bag, heavy with the weight of what I did. The bloody clothes. The gun. The knife. The severed heads. They are in a Dunlap bag. My sister sits on the couch, a bit too upright. Like a little doll. Her mouth contorts into an upside down smirk.

  “I was helping mom,” my sister says. “What you got in that bag?”

  “Nothing.”

  I jerk the bag up casually.

  “Just work stuff.”

  My sister looks at the bag, then eyes the television. News headlines of recent disappearances and possible mass murder. Not that many bodies found. Yet.

  “You hear about these girls going missing?” she asks.

  “Uh,” I say. “I think so. Every cop’s warning about it. People are crazy, y’know.”

  I turn, walk towards my room, and hear as the television whizzes off. The white static hisses away, like the foam of a horrible sea swell. I know, inevitably, it will be back again. Once Charybdis spews once again.

  “Did you kill those girls, Ed?” my sister asks.

  My feet stop at my room’s doorway. I don’t turn to see. But I know my sister is staring at me. Seeing me for what I am. The mask. It must be slipping. My head bends down. I can feel a smile form itself on my face. I try to hide it.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  I adjust my glasses. And go into my room. The door shuts behind me. But will it hide what I am for long?

  #

  I used to cut off the heads because they were where the person was. The mouth and tongue. The eyes. The brain. The ears. Speak no evil. See no evil. Think no evil. Hear no evil. I don’t know where I left the bodies, exactly. But the heads were mine. All mine.

  I kept them in the fridge in my room, or in the basement. Sometimes, I took them out. Then tried to solve their riddles. Like a blind prophet on the highest peaks of mad mountains, I spoke to the Sphinx. I’m sorry you have to hear that. But it’s how I made sense of the chaos I was doing.

  #

  When I put the Asian’s on the nightstand, I speak to it. I ask her questions. She tells me all about her family, her future, her studies, her dreams, her aspirations. I bend my ear and listen. She likes poetry. Robert Frost’s her favourite. I hadn’t read him. I never plan to. But she reads a poem for me. It’s called “A Butterfly,” I think. When her luscious mouth moves, it’s like a butterfly’s own colourful wings opening and shutting. She finishes the poem. Her head gets real tired. She closes her eyes. She falls asleep. Dreaming dreams of rose-wreaths and withered leaves.

  Once I put the Asian’s head in a plastic bag and freeze it, it was time for the blue-eyed girl. She opens her eyes immediately. An owl on my nightstand. She speaks meekly. I think she’s real shy. She never reads poetry. More of a nonfiction reader. Particularly politics and psychology, as well as philosophy. I’ve no clue what any of this shit’s about. But this girl, her name’s Jocasta, explains it. Simple and essential, as if a five year old can wrap their little head round it. Her blue eyes seem bright. Brighter than before. Sparkling. Dazzling.

  I get as hard as rock. She’s so pretty. I’d already been lustful. Why wasn’t it enough? More, more, more. By god, she’s beautiful. I take out my horn. Azure eyes look me up and down, hungrily. As if a Sphinx. Ready to swallow me whole.

  “No,” she says. “You must answer my riddle first.”

  Flickering in her eyes. Ghostly constellations coming to new life.

  “Aw shit,” I say.

  “What uses four legs in the morning, two legs in the evening, and a third leg in the night?” she asks.

  Tongues lick lips. Hungry, are we? I grin.

  “Me.”

  #

  The hole isn’t much. But you gotta realise. It’s summoned all these memories. All these horrors. All these sensations. Even in the shadows, I hear and see the Sphinx. Whispers. Traces of her tongue. The flap of wings. The purrs.

  And, now, I see what got me here in the first place. It wasn’t the co-eds. It wasn’t the grandparents. It wasn’t the asylum. It’s mother. Her voice. That incessant whining. The horrid combination of nasally and vocal fry.

  I don’t have any light to see. Still, I know she’s there. She’s staring at me. And I can hear her. Jeez Louise. Shut up, you bitch. But she’s calling out, from some unseen hole in the ground. It must be a portal to hell. That must be it. If I find it, I can scream right back at her. Then she’ll have to hear what she let into this world. At least, I don’t have to look at her ugly drunken self anymore.

  #

  The hole. I found it. I’m leaning over it right now. It was hard to find. Like a needle in a haystack. What, with all these dark holes, all these voids, inside this infinite darkness. But I found her. She was whining. She was whispering about riddles.

  Dear God, so long as I don’t have to hear another riddle, I will be a changed man. Forever and ever. You must have infinite love and infinite mercy. Please, don’t let me hear a riddle again. Otherwise, you’ll really see me for my true self. You’ll really see me scream. I don’t want to hear anything anymore. Not from me. Not from books. Not from the hole. Just let it be quiet for once.

  #

  Hi, it’s Ed. I know you wanted me to finish off that book reading for the blind. But I can’t do it anymore. I’ve found inner peace, for the first time in my life. I see the light. And I wanna change. Transform. I’m not in a bughouse anymore. Not in a prison. I’m in a cocoon. And, hoo boy, am I gonna break out. And fly into the sun. Return to the womb with you, sis.

  #

  Dear, Ed. It’s me. I know you don’t wanna talk about what happened anymore. But I forgive you. Mother and pops. I know they went through some stuff. But, it’s like that Kafka story. With the beetle. I don’t know. But even when he’s gone through that all. Life goes on. The sister wakes up from strange dreams. What happened to the beetle and his dreams, I do not know. But the sister, his sister, must go on to live and be. And I think I am waking from a strange dream. It must go on. As all things must.

  If you grow your wings and fly into the sun, don’t forget. Life is not a riddle, if you choose to find the truth. I am no longer blind. I see you for what you are. I love you, Ed. I hope you love me.

  #

  Hi, sis. I hear you. I am in my cocoon still. Sorry about the dolls. I took the little dolly heads off. But, y’know, kids are kids. My wings might come. But I want you to see the world as it is, not as it was because of my own vision. Goodbye, sis. ‘Til next time. See you on the other side. I used to only think I was a man. But I’m a damned butterfly.